fondness for presences and people.
Best of all, Jack Smith, the grim kitch-
en-sink realist who became such a hap-
py and jazzy abstractionist, was never
happy and jazzy! No! Instead, the NPG
has shown that he never abandoned
his kitchen-sink tendencies and re-
mained a determined portraitist. The
black picture with the broken spine of
crosses and S-shapes—that’s a self-por-
trait. The constructivist dart board,
pinned with rectangular darts and
anked by trombone twists, is a portrait
of Harrison Birtwistle.
None of this ought to surprise us. If
art depends on anything it is the retrieval
and pleasuring of retinal memories. So, of
course, the people and faces we have en-
countered must play a role. As Giacometti
once explained when asked about the
wafer-thin igures he kept in a matchI’ve been prompted into these mus-
ings by events at the National Portrait
Gallery in London. In an eort to rev-
olutionise its own presence—or at least
to update it—the NPG has, in recent
years, undertaken a series of scrump-
ing raids on unexpected corners of the art
world. An assortment of high-achieving
artists, whom I would never usually
suspect of being portraitists, have been
secreted into the gallery and unveiled as
face-painters, manqué. A couple of years
ago, Bridget Riley, Mrs Hard-Edged Op
art, premiered some early portrait draw-
ings. It turned out that in her student
days, she admired Renaissance portrai-
ture and sought to emulate it. And that
—get this—the rhythms and structures
of her portraiture are still playing a part
today in her Op art. “Abstraction for her
was not a break; it was the culmination
of hundreds of hours working on the
human form.” Hah!
Also popping up recently at the NPG
was Howard Hodgkin, the Walt Disney
of British abstraction, whose Bambi-
coloured mood-pieces were presented
as the climax of a fuzzy, career-longANYONE YOU KNOW?
Opposite: Large Still Life with a Pedestal Table,
1931, by Pablo Picasso. Right: Weeping Woman,
1937, and Tenora and Violin, 1913ON THE FACE OF IT
Above left: Peter Warren Cochrane, 1962,
by Howard Hodgkin. Left: Portrait of a
NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY COCHRANE BY HOWARD HODGKIN; ©THE ESTATE OF JACK SMITH, COURTESY OF FLOWERS GALLERY COMPOSER BY JACK SMITH; NATIONAL GALLERY OF VICTORIA, MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA/BRIDGEMAN IMAGES ©SUCCESSION PICASSO/DACS, LONDON 2019 (WEEPING WOMAN); THE STATE HERMITAGE MUSEUM, ST PETERSBURG, RUSSIA/BRIDGEMAN IMAGES ©SUCCESSION PICASSO/DACS, LONDON 2019 (TENORA AND VIOLIN)Composer I, 1987, by Jack SmithNOVEMBER 2019 VANITY FAIR ON ARTYou need to
evoke the
the larger
presence
of your
sitter; their
character;
their soul;
their big
picture
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